Thank God, Fat Floats....

SkinnyBubbaGaar

Just wanted to say howdy to everyone in this group.

Former competitive HS swimming and water polo athlete here. Switched sports over to rowing in my college years, but still swam daily/regularly throughout that time period in addition to my daily rowing workouts.

Flash forward 25+ years and I fell into the trap of letting things go and this past year looked into the mirror and saw a 346 lb blob of a man. Happened pretty suddenly out of college, to be honest, as I was used to being able to consume vast quantities of food because my heavy training had my TDEE set so high. Once the physical activity slowed down (and eventually stopped all-together) the lbs began to pack on rapidly because I never adjusted my food intake accordingly to offset the extreme slow-down in PA.

In any event, had a wake up call towards the tail end of 2012 and realized that I need to get this S*** all back under control.

Been back into the pool for me and have to say it's finally starting to feel good again.

It was pretty embarassing at first, to find myself huffin' and puffin' just trying to complete 250-500m - but very thankful that fat floats!

Getting better all of the time, though. Have made changes with respect to eating better and have been increasing the swimming distances and times gradually. Nowhere near close to those 5000m to 6000m and above workout days of yesteryear, but currently much improvement over when I first got back in the swim of things for sure.

Have dropped over 50+ lbs from my peak/worst weight of 346+ and about 1/3 of the my way towards my goal of having myself back under 200 lbs before the end of 2013.

For now, I am planning and implementing my own w/o schedule in the pool - but as my strengths and abilities slowly come back I will consider whether a more structured plan would be of better service.

Anyone out there have experiance with Masters programs? Might be interesting to consider for me sometime in the future.

In any event, just wanted to say hello to all of the other swimmers out there in this group.

Anyone else have the experiance with starting back up with swimming as your primary excercise plan after having been gone from the sport for such a very long time? What has been the hardest part of that and, what has been the best part, in this process?

Take care, folks!


- DG

Macstraw

I was also away from swimming for a long time (grew up swimming competitively through high school). When I finally got back to it the hardest part was the lack of endurance - I was lucky to do a 10 lap set without stopping in a 17 yard pool. The best part was how quickly the distance increased until I could do 5800+ yards in a workout. I also find I can be away from it for wuite awhile now & when I get back my endurance is still better than when I first started back up. I've been on a roll lately, back in the water just about every weekday for the past 3 1/2 weeks after being away from it since the end of the summer & it's been going good. On Monday I'm going to add the last set to my workout that has me back to the yardage I was doing at my peak about 2 years ago, after a few weeks of that I will start to alternate days doing the distance workout & doing shorter, more intense sets while getting back to working on the other strokes. Right now it's just been freestyle, but I finally feel like my shoulders are close to strong enough to add in some butterfly......

Keep up the good work, you've done a great job getting yourself back. Reading stuff like what you wrote is what gets me through those days that I don't feel like dragging my butt to the pool. Knowing other people are doing it makes it easier to do it.....

jenlock2000

Im a swimmer and I teach a college class on swimming and it's always funny to see how my students start out and how they finish. Endurance is a big issue that many of them don't have and they are all 18-21 year olds. I can slowly see during a semester that the more they practice the more endurance they have. Practice makes perfect no matter whatthe age.

Macstraw

Thanks, Jen - it's nice to hear that the young 'uns are having the same issues as us old-timers.....

SkinnyBubbaGaar

Thanks for the replies folks. Good to hear that the endurance side of this equation will only get better as time marches on!

matthew_b

I was never competitive but did swim a lot when younger. I was a lifeguard, did mile swims and so on.

I hit a peak of a few pounds higher than you. My first time back in the pool I was only able to do 9 laps. It took me about 3 months to be able to swim continuous, about 6 months to do my first mile. It was over a year before I was doing flip turns.

Now what I've noticed the most is the buoyancy changes. I've lost almost all the fat out of my legs and I have to work harder to keep them up.

SkinnyBubbaGaar

Cool Matt. Great progress. Bad news, however, about the loss of buoyancy in the legs as the fat burns off!

KANGOOJUMPS

YOU ALL CAN DO THIS!!!!!!!!

kimpossible471

I was also a competitive swimmer almost 25 years ago, and recently joined the local Masters. Having a coach to run through the drills with has been AWESOME. The couple of times I went to swim laps prior to that - I think I barely squeezed out 1,000 yards. A few weeks of getting into the pool with others, and someone standing on the deck giving you specific splits and goals made a world of difference. I had been running for about 6 months, so the endurance wasn't really the problem - it was all arm strength and focus. Join a program....you will be surprised how quickly it comes back. I've been back in for a few weeks, and am putting in 3,000yards plus each workout. I'm not fast enough to make some of the splits on our drills, so yardage in the "fast" lanes is a bit more. I think you will find most masters programs have a wide range of skill level and swimming background. The first day was REALLY intimidating....but if you have the background, you will probably find (like I did) that you are in the middle of the pack - there are usually a few that are completely new to the sport as well as triathletes that don't have the same base stroke skills.

Good luck!!

Macstraw

This topic got me to start adding a few flip turns today, the first 4 turns of each set I was able to do. I know I will be able to keep increasing the amount of them, as the day went on my turns were getting better & faster - not as good as they used to be but much better than the occasional ones I've tried. Currently at 4420 yards per workout (17 yard pool), Monday I'm adding another set to bring me to 5780. After a few weeks I will use that as my distance workout (swimming a pyramid - sets of 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 ,60, 40, 20 & 10 laps), I will alternate days with that & sets that are shorter & more intense where I will also work on my other strokes, as well as technique, pulling, kicking, etc. For now I've just been swimming freestyle (front crawl) & building up endurance, strength (especially the shoulders & arms) & distance. In just a few weeks I've dropped some weight, but more importantly I feel much stronger - especially my core, my back & my legs.....

Just a reminder for those watching the scale (I have to keep reminding myself of this so I'm aware of the progress I'm making) - don't be concerned if you don't see pounds dropping off as fast as you would like, you are still burning the fat but you are also building muscle, which weighs more. Remember that you are burning off more fat than the scale shows because the mass of the muscle is increasing & adding poundage, but you are indeed making great progress. My wife had a trainer who told her she hates that people trying to get in shape get on a scale, she thinks everybody should stay away from scales & use measurements (neck, waist, hips, chest, shoulders, etc.) to track their progress. If you only have a little weight to lose you may actually end up weighing more pounds but will be a smaller size....

Good luck to all & stay the course, you're all making great progress.....

SkinnyBubbaGaar

I was also a competitive swimmer almost 25 years ago, and recently joined the local Masters. Having a coach to run through the drills with has been AWESOME. The couple of times I went to swim laps prior to that - I think I barely squeezed out 1,000 yards. A few weeks of getting into the pool with others, and someone standing on the deck giving you specific splits and goals made a world of difference. I had been running for about 6 months, so the endurance wasn't really the problem - it was all arm strength and focus. Join a program....you will be surprised how quickly it comes back. I've been back in for a few weeks, and am putting in 3,000yards plus each workout. I'm not fast enough to make some of the splits on our drills, so yardage in the "fast" lanes is a bit more. I think you will find most masters programs have a wide range of skill level and swimming background. The first day was REALLY intimidating....but if you have the background, you will probably find (like I did) that you are in the middle of the pack - there are usually a few that are completely new to the sport as well as triathletes that don't have the same base stroke skills.

Good luck!!

Kim, yes I do believe this to be true. Thankfully, all of those years of swimming competitively have the payback that - even at this higher weight - my stroke and technique are still pretty damn efficient.

Been back at it for a few weeks now and have gone from feeling like a sea-cow just to put in 500m to now up to 2000-2500 yards per workout. Plan to get that back into the 3K-4K range in the not too distant future.

Once I'm back to being comfortable with those longer distances, then the plan will be to start working on a plan to improve split times and intervals.

I do believe that a masters program will eventually be of benefit in order to keep me motivated and accountable - but will wait a bit longer on that front until I can work up my speeds a bit.

What I really would wish for is that there would be some sort of masters Water Polo program in my area. Loved, loved, loved playing that sport and all of the hard swimming work never felt like working out when playing polo - it was just a positive incindental by-product of playing the sport.

matthew_b

I agree about knowing the technique. It took me only a few months to beat even fit people if they didn't know their strokes well. I'm 1/2 the speed of the H.S. swimmers I swim next to, but most recreational lap swimmers can't keep up with me.

murdy745

I swim Master's and really enjoy it. I am 33, former college swimmer but I really didn't start swimming competitively again until last year while training for a 70.3. You will be surprised how quickly your body will return to the old days..our bodies always remember. My main issue is my shoulders. I was starting to hit fast interval times and forgot that I was no longer in my twenties..increasing mileage too quickly can kill you. Alas, I ended upping my mileage too fast thinking I was in college again, tore my shoulder for the first time ever and was out for several months...so just be careful. Enjoy!

Macstraw

I swim Master's and really enjoy it. I am 33, former college swimmer but I really didn't start swimming competitively again until last year while training for a 70.3. You will be surprised how quickly your body will return to the old days..our bodies always remember. My main issue is my shoulders. I was starting to hit fast interval times and forgot that I was no longer in my twenties..increasing mileage too quickly can kill you. Alas, I ended upping my mileage too fast thinking I was in college again, tore my shoulder for the first time ever and was out for several months...so just be careful. Enjoy!

GREAT reminder - while we are trying to move forward, we have to be intelligent about how we do it. For myself, I didn't put all this extra weight on overnight & it's not going to come off overnight so I just have to keep at it & stay consistent, I will eventually get to where I want to be. I hope your shoulder is feeling ok......

clari_netter

I also used to be a very good swimmer back in the day then stopped for a very long time. I decided to get back into swimming in order to do triathlons and it was depressingly hard at first but it was amazing how quickly you get back into things. I'm now having to re-return to swimming again after having a bad bike crash which put me out of action for a while and then a baby. One of the best things I've done is start up my own group of people who are keen for swimming so when I want to go I just send out a group text and whoever is keen comes along. I find we all push ourselves a lot more as a group and it saves paying to go to masters. I was doing the half ironman swim training sessions on beginnertriathlete.com but thanks to this group have now started doing the speedo pace club ones. I'm sure it would be possible to start up a social water polo group if there isn't one, usually if you're keen to do something so are lots of other people!

Macstraw

Congratulations on getting back to swimming!!!! Hope you're feeling better after the bike crash & recovery. I think you'll find it easier getting back into the swing of it the 2nd time around........